ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the main features of the coalition's changes to employment law and argues that, in reality, these changes have constituted a significant weakening of what Wedderburn famously characterized as a system of a floor of individual employment rights a system which was largely put in place in the 1970s. In focusing on reducing individual employment rights the coalition has passed off employment rights as red tape' imposing a costly and undue constraint on business and economic efficiency. The coalition's most far-reaching changes to specific employment rights were with respect to reducing the protection provided to employees by unfair dismissal rights. The chapter examines the coalition's deregulatory changes and an evaluates their effects, with regard both to the extent to which they have delivered on their stated objectives promoting employment growth and flexibility and the adverse impact on workers employment protection rights and the attendant reduced capacity to assert them.
